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One little-argued view from Eastern Canada’s Golden Triangle, enthusiastically endorsed by some pundits, is that in a global seller’s market for energy, Canada’s power centre has inexorably shifted to oil-rich Alberta.

After all, the prime minister is from Calgary, the governing Conservatives have their must unassailable power base in Alberta and the province is accelerating its exploitation of the vast bitumen deposits in what used to be called the tarsands before they were rebranded.

Thanks to these deposits, which account for 97 per cent of the 174 billion barrel reserves that place Canada third globally behind Saudi Arabia and Venezuela in terms of such resources, Alberta is assumed to be the country’s new economic muscle.

Heck, Albertans and their Ottawa backers have even told the United States to buzz off – that they won’t be held hostage to American market politics and will, instead, develop new partnerships with China, the repressive capitalist-Communist mutant now stirring as the chief economic and military rival to our erstwhile buddy, Uncle Sam, in what he’s long considered his Pacific bathtub.

Daring stuff.

But is it possible that natural gas, not bitumen, is emerging as the energy story for decades – maybe centuries — and that Alberta has already had its grimy 15 minutes of fame as Canada’s new power broker and could soon be jostled aside by clean, green B.C.?

Last week’s report of a new shale gas discovery in the Liard Basin which holds commercially viable reserves of 48 trillion cubic feet — almost 10 times the total annual production of Canada’s western sedimentary basin – should certainly be cause for some re-evaluation of assumptions about what comes next on the energy front.

Those are just the reserves thought to be recoverable with current technology. The estimated reservoir is 210 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, an astonishing amount equal to almost 40 times the total annual production from all of Western Canada.

And that’s on the basis of a single well drilled in 2009 and kept secret while the company that drilled it acquired adjacent properties. After the well was fracked – that is, had water injected under high pressure to fracture rock formations and free gas deposits – it reportedly flowed 21 million cubic feet per day.

Similar B.C. gas fields with the potential for huge yields are under development at Horn River and Montney. There is great potential for even more discoveries in B.C., Yukon and the Northwest Territories. These reserves aren’t stranded, as are those in the Arctic Islands. They can easily be piped to tidewater in B.C., where liquefaction plants are on the drawing board.

Now, this isn’t an argument for or against fracking as a technique – critics raise reasonable questions about the vast quantities of water required – or whether we should be developing fossil fuel reserves and exporting them to countries with slack environmental standards while simultaneously preaching reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Those are debates for another day.

It is to observe that national and international targets for greenhouse gas emissions notwithstanding, the insatiable and rapidly growing appetite for energy in both developed and developing nations means that we are going to continue to use carbon-based fuels in the foreseeable future.

As Denis Hayes, founder of Earth Day and president of the Seattle-based Bullitt Foundation which strives to create models of sustainability for urban living in the Pacific Northwest pointed out a decade ago, the world commercially consumed about 12 terawatts of power per year. A terawatt of energy is equivalent to that released by burning a billion tonnes of coal. Today the world commercially consumes about 15 terawatts per year, an increase of 20 per cent since 2001.

As economies develop in Asia, South America and eventually Africa, energy demand will grow and simple justice demands it, for there is a direct correlation between energy consumption and poverty. If morality demands that the impoverished billions of the undeveloped world be lifted out of their anguish, it’s going to take a lot of energy – actual as well as metaphysical.

Think of it another way. On a per capita energy use basis, Canadians and Americans average about 12 kilowatts of energy per year, Hayes has pointed out. The average European uses about six kilowatts. The average person in the undeveloped world uses less than one kilowatt.

So if global population stabilizes at 10 billion people while Canadians and Americans are successful at greening their economies and cutting per capita energy consumption by three-quarters, if the Europeans cut theirs by half and if the developing world increases per capita energy consumption to a new global average of three kilowatts per person, total annual world energy demand is still going to be 30 terawatts – double what it is today.

This inevitable increase in energy demand is going to occur just as conventional oil depletion begins to accelerate, which means sharp rises in price. To generate 30 terawatts of energy in the absence of oil or gas means burning 30 billion tonnes of coal per year.

Burning that much coal would boost the world’s carbon dioxide output by three per cent per year and that’s a rate that should scare even the most adamant of climate change skeptics.

Enter natural gas. Burning it releases only about half the quantity of carbon dioxide released by coal, so, just like choosing to drive a four-cylinder instead of an eight-cylinder car reduces one’s carbon footprint by half, each kilowatt of energy recovered from gas instead of from coal or oil helps reduce greenhouse loading into the atmosphere.

It turns out that the world has enormous natural gas reserves. The U.S., for example, has enough in its reserves to maintain current levels of consumption until 2128. Canada has enough to maintain current production levels until 2172.

So with technological retooling we can possibly reduce greenhouse emissions while maintaining the energy supplies we need for computers and communications, transportation, heating and cooling buildings, food production and manufacturing.

Natural gas can be used to fuel automobiles while reducing carbon dioxide emissions – and reducing them even more sharply if fuel-efficient hybrid vehicles constructed of lighter materials replace the current fleet of gasoline powered vehicles.

It can be used to generate electricity more efficiently and with significantly less greenhouse gas emissions, so every time a gas generating plant can be substituted for a coal burning plant in China or India or Africa, it’s a significant plus for the atmosphere.

None of this means other green energy sources – solar, wind, tidal and hydro – won’t be a substantial part of the energy mix and increasingly so as the world transitions to a post-carbon world. It does mean that the importance of natural gas as a component in the cleaner energy mix is growing while the importance of oil may be diminishing along with easily recoverable reserves.

This has long-term significance for B.C. The clearest signals of the tide change can be found in comparing dramatically different reactions to energy proposals in the province’s north.

The stiffening opposition to Alberta’s drive for bitumen pipelines through B.C. to supply Asia contrasts vividly with a relative tolerance for natural gas pipelines along essentially the same routes to liquefaction plants at the same terminals.

Albertans seem stumped by the hostility to one and the acceptance of the other. Write about this opposition and email in-baskets fill with bristling observations that there are already deals in place for natural gas pipelines to LNG terminals in the same communities vowing to block a bitumen pipeline.

This misses a key point, which is the contrast in reaction itself.

First nations groups which have vowed to block the Enbridge Northern Gateway proposal are partnering with gas producers; environmental groups which are hostile to bitumen pipelines are relatively quiet on natural gas pipelines; communities denouncing tanker terminals for bitumen are prepared to accept them for natural gas.

In one respect, this is the emerging politics of “dirty oil” at its most superficial level. In another, it’s evidence of the sophistication of the public in assessing risks and benefits and anticipating the future of supply and demand in the energy market.

Most of the natural gas in North America travels to market by pipelines which are no less susceptible to ruptures than oil or bitumen pipelines.

The difference lies in the obvious environmental impact and cleanup costs associated with the latter.

When gas pipelines break the immediate results can be spectacular but they don’t flood rivers, beaches or landscapes with tarry, sticky, lethal goo that takes decades or centuries to mitigate.

Offer British Columbians a choice and they are going to go for the cleaner, greener option – especially when proposed projects leave them bearing all the risks and eventual costs while the benefits accrue elsewhere.

So British Columbians have just arrived at the place where their own energy muscle can be flexed, saying yes to greener natural gas development and no to “dirty oil.”

It’s more complicated, of course, and in some respects the public affairs war has been unfair to Alberta, but future policy clearly isn’t going to be – and shouldn’t be – simply dictated to British Columbians from Edmonton or Ottawa.

One thing is clear from all this. B.C. needs a comprehensive energy strategy that will create a policy framework for future governments of whatever political stripe. We’ve done this before. The Sloan Commission in 1945 brought order to a free-for-all in the forest industry and shaped provincial policy for half a century.

We need a similar approach now. We need a strategy that is non-partisan, non-ideological and is drafted with all stakeholders at the table and seeking consensus in the long-term interests of all British Columbians. Let’s get on with it instead of dithering, fence-sitting and posturing for short-term political gain.

There’s a major window of opportunity opening. Not seizing that opportunity would be criminal abdication of stewardship by our elected governments.

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